Commission proposes review of measures to
hasten cod recovery

The European Commission today adopted a proposal to
amend the cod recovery plan which has been in place since 2005. Recent
scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea
(ICES) concludes that the current measures have been inadequate to reduce
fishing pressure on cod to the point where it could allow the stock to recover.
Of the four cod stocks concerned, only North Sea cod has shown some limited
signs of recovery. The main changes proposed today include new objectives based
on limiting the amount of fish removed from the sea by fishing rather than on
targeting defined amounts of cod in the stock concerned, simplification of the
fishing effort management system and a more flexible approach in adapting the
rate of fishing pressure reduction to different stages of recovery. There will
also be specific mechanisms to encourage the reduction of discards and to
encourage the application of cod-avoidance programmes. The plan would also be
extended to cover the Celtic Sea cod stock. The Commission's proposal is based
on the collective experience of implementing the plan over the last three years,
and on the opinions of stakeholders as summarised in the symposium on cod
recovery held in March 2007.

European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Joe Borg commented,
"There is a consensus on the need to revise the cod recovery plan. The
Commission has listened carefully to stakeholders. Clearly, there are no magic
formulas to help the recovery of the cod stocks. We need to fish less and
better. However, what the Commission proposes is an approach that is more
effective, flexible and pragmatic and which provides the necessary tools to
Member States and the sector to help cod recover."

The revised cod recovery plan would replace the targets set in the current
plan in terms of biomass levels (the physical quantity of fish in the sea), with
new targets expressed as an optimum fishing rate intended to guarantee the
highest sustainable yield. This approach reflects the changes being brought
about in the marine environment by global warming, which require the use of more
flexible benchmarks than biomass targets. The proposed revision will also
introduce a new system of effort management - currently expressed as days at sea
– by setting effort ceilings (expressed in kilowatt-days) for groups of
vessels or fleet segments. These ceilings would be managed at national level by
the Member States.

The new system will be simpler, more flexible and more efficient than the
current approach, where the effort limitations set at EU level are complicated
by numerous derogations introduced to adapt to specific local situations.
Reductions in effort will be proportionate to the targeted reductions in fishing
mortality for the segments that contribute most to cod mortality whereas for
other segments concerned will be frozen at the average level for the 2005-2007
period.

A flexible approach will also make it possible to graduate catch and effort
limitations in line with improvements in the biological condition of the cod
stocks concerned. Fishing mortality would thus be reduced year-on-year by 25%,
15% or 10% depending on the gravity of the condition of the stock, until the
target mortality rate of 0.4 has been met. The current fishing mortality is
estimated to range from 0.7 to 1.

In those cases where scientists are unable to provide the Commission with
adequate data and advice, the plan now establishes clear rules to be followed,
namely, a 25% reduction in fishing mortality when scientific advice recommends
reducing catches to the lowest possible level, and a 15% reduction in all other
cases. This will avert the problems encountered under the original plan, where
the lack of clear scientific guidance led Council to set annual catch limits on
a purely ad hoc basis.

Discard reduction is key to the Commission's approach to more sustainable
fisheries. This is particularly important in the fisheries covered by the cod
recovery plan as they are essentially mixed fisheries (several species are
caught together). As a result, it is difficult to achieve the right balance
between limiting fishing pressure on vulnerable cod stocks and allowing fishers
to take advantage of the healthy state of other stocks, which underpin their
ability to make a living. New measures are therefore proposed to encourage
fishers to engage in cod-avoidance programmes.

The Celtic Sea cod stock was excluded from the 2004 cod recovery plan.
However, recent evaluations confirm that this stock is as overexploited as are
the other cod stocks in EU waters. It is therefore necessary to include it in
the recovery plan. New control provisions are also proposed which are adapted to
the new structure and measures introduced by the revision.

The Commission's proposal is based on input from stakeholders, and on
scientific advice from both ICES and the Commission's own Scientific, Technical
and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF). In particular, STECF recommended
the need for much faster reductions in fishing pressure on cod, so as to achieve
fishing rates in the region of 50% or less of those seen in recent years.

The cod recovery plan was the first long-term management plan to be adopted
by the EU in the wake of the 2002 Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. The
overall objective of the plan was to ensure the recovery of the cod stocks
concerned to the precautionary stock sizes advised by scientists within a time
frame of five to ten years. The cod stocks covered by the 2004 plan were those
in the North Sea, Kattegat and Skaggerak, the Eastern Channel, the Irish Sea,
and West of Scotland.